Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Just got back from the monthly meeting of the Sunset Hill Community Association. The SHCA is possibly Seattle's oldest continuously active neighborhood group. It was founded in 1922 by 10 residents organizing around the installation of a waterline in the area. ("Sunset Hill" is bounded by 24th Ave. NW on the east, Shilshole Bay on the west, the Ballard Locks on the south, and NW 85th St. on the North.)

Founded to urbanize the area (and quite successful at it), the association is now headed in the other direction, attempting to hold off the inexorable onslaught of wall-to-wall condominiums headed our way from downtown Ballard.

We met tonight in the original clubhouse at 30th NW and NW 66th, built in 1927 and currently undergoing interior renovation. After endorsing a slate for next year's officers and trustees (one of whom turns out to be a neighbor from our old place in Wallingford, who also moved west), we heard a panel of master gardeners.

Here are a couple of hot gardening tips from them, plus a tip from me:
1. KelpUse kelp, available in mixable powder or pre-mixed liquid form, on plants before or after planting. You can't use too much kelp!
2. Corn GlutenPrevent weed seeds from sprouting by sprinkling corn gluten on gravel paths and lawns walkways every six weeks. (Don't sprinkle it where you want plant or grass seeds to sprout, but it's OK to sprinkle on plants and lawns that are already past the seed stage to prevent weeds.)
3. Chicken GritMy tip: To improve garden drainage and prevent water from pooling on top of new compost, apply plenty of chicken grit along with your compost or potting soil when planting. (Chicken grit is sharp shale, and will make soil nice and loose. Avoid using fine-grain sand, which is round, rather than sharp, and can turn your soil into a form of concrete.)

One master garden had a tip for sprouting sweet peas, which I'm not going to include because sweet peas are mildly poisonous for cats and I don't want to encourage people to plant them. You can find numorous sites on the web with lengthy and hair-raising lists of plants "poisonous" to cats. I believe it was Cat Watch, Cornell Veterinary college's feline health newsletter (subscription only, contents not available online), that had an article a while back on the issue and pointed out that only a few plants are actually deadly. (Leading the deadly list are the Easter lily, Tiger lily, and Asiatic lily, and the very common day lily. Apparently just getting pollen from these plants on the nose is enough to kill a small kitten, and many kittens die from kidney damage within a couple days of contact with Easter bouquets.) Other plants, like the potato, are merely irritating. Sheba, our deaf white cat, is a "chewer," and she went around drooling for a couple days after nibbling on a potato leaf in our neighbor's garden—more annoying for us than for her, apparently.

The latest issue of the excellent Netsurfer Digest points out the sure-to-be-controversial site Pick Up Your Own Damn Socks. [This site is now defunct--MT] Likely to be more popular with those who pick up socks--their own and those of others--than with those who are scratching their heads over why anyone would bother either to pick up socks or to write about it.

Twenty years ago, when I had just moved to Seattle and was temping as a secretary at Metro, I spotted an ad in The Weekly for editors and writers for a new magazine. Desperate for a writing gig, I answered it. An aspiring publisher had a concept for a national magazine, similar to Psychology Today but focused on law and true crime. The job market must have been truly grim in those days because he was able to pull together a strong group of professionals for the first, and only, issue. It included an experienced graphic designer, a veteran copy editor recently laid off from the Tacoma daily, a professional photographer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-reporter from the Seattle Times, now working as a private investigator. The magazine never got past the first issue, but that issue had a big impact on my career, enabling me to get a job in communications and re-start my professional life.

What does this have to do with camellias? One of the features for the magazine was a whimsical back-of-the-book column. For the demo issue, it was written by the reporter/private eye, and it was about a case he'd undertaken. It took place in early spring, camellia season. An East Side psychiatrist was finding camellia blossoms arranged on his front lawn in the middle of the night--but only when he returned from an out-of-town trip. Suspecting this might be the work of an obsessed ex-patient, and failing in his own attempts to catch the prankster in the act, he called in the professionals. When he next left town, they set up a stakeout from the upstairs of an empty house across the street. After a couple of nights of watching his house, the investigators were ready to give up. Over coffee at a nearby Denny's one of them remarked that she'd sat there all night, and all she'd seen was the shrink's cat, going back and forth, and back and forth. The light went on! Returning to the client's house, they found a tell-tale grouping of camellia blossoms in the front yard, carefully assembled by the feline. To make matters even more amusing, the client initially refused to accept their explanation. Eventually he had to agree. It seemed that he had rescued the cat, it was tremendously attached to him, and, for whatever reason, dealt with his absences by creating floral arrangements.

Our enormous pink camellia bush is in bloom. Today I came across one of our cats, batting tentatively at a fallen blossom, and that story came back to me. I can't remember the name of the writer, or the name of the magazine. But I'll never forget the East Side camellia mystery.

Friday, March 19, 2004

It's been a frustrating, relentless work week. Nothing bad has happened, per se, but the succession of long, pressure-filled days has been like a steady buzz of static eroding my patience and interfering with my perception of whatever pleasantness may be going on around me.

A few of the people I usually try to avoid have called this week, as well as a few I now plan to avoid in the future. While talking with them, I usually retreat into a cringing vagueness because I dread questions like:

"You're going to New York on the 23rd? Oh, why don't you reschedule for May so I can go along?"

(Because if I'd wanted to go to New York with you, I'd have asked you in the first place.)

"I've taken down some enormous paintings that seemed a bit outdated. It occured to me that if you painted your livingroom orange and got rid of some of your furniture, they'd look great at your place. I'm too busy to move them, so when can you come pick them up?"

(Right about the time hell freezes over and you get frostbite.)

"I know you use a Mac, but my PC has crashed and I can't seem to reload Windows. Do you know anybody who knows a lot about PCs who could fix it for me right away?"

(Yes. And they are listed in the phone book under "Computer Repair.")

OK, rant mode off. I am still awash in waves of incredulity about these bozos.

Eight years ago I herniated a disc and one of the therapies the neurologists tried was a seven-day course of anti-inflammatory steriods. It didn't help my back at all, but it was fantastic for my mental health! While taking the steriods, I actually said all the things I now only imagine saying to people. Things like:

After a few days, my husband (who'd been the surprised and amused recipient of a few of these highly uncharacteristic drug-induced responses) remarked "Well, now you know how I handle pushy people."

I suppose if I'd stayed on the steroids my responses would eventually have been accompanied by bursts of fire from an attack weapon. In hopes of maintaining my new-found talents, I went to a therapist. She played the jerk and I used my "buzz off" lines to diffuse her, but, as the drugs wore off, the delightfully icy calm I'd experienced gave way to my usual fantasies of flight.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

March 27 - Four years at my current (rather wonderful) job
April 7-13 - Passover
April 23-25 - Arbor Daze Festival, Euless Texas (performers include Alex Chilton and The Boxtops)
May 28-31 - Northwest Folklife Festival
June 25 - 9th wedding anniversary (with the right husband)
July 25 - Mom's 85th
July 16 - Brady's 50th!
July 31 - Nina and Mike's wedding (Brady officiates, I get to be one of the huppa holders)
August 14 - Nephew Luke's bar mitzvah

My friend Nina was in town this weekend and after breakfast this morning we went to the Portlock store near the Locks in Ballard to buy salmon. The shop wasn't open yet, so we wandered over to Epilogue, the used bookstore just down the street.

Nina, who teaches elementary school, headed for the children's books section, where a book cover immediately caught my eye. The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn shows a mother and baby raccoon in the dark, silhouetted against a full moon. I picked it up and started reading about a young raccoon who is anxious about his first "night" at school. His resourceful mother comes up with a solution that allows him to bring the comfort of home and family along with him. The book, which Publisher's Weekly described--inaccurately, in my opinion--as "sugary," poses a problem, reveals a solution, and ends with a nice twist. The sophisticated illustrations of the raccoons' nocturnal environment, by Ruth Harper and Nancy Leak, hint that there is more to this than just a fuzzy raccoon tale.

The Kissing Hand has a 5-star Amazon rating, and the Amazon reader reviews are worth a book themselves. One mother wrote of using it after 9/11 to calm her child, who had become upset whenever the father (a police officer) went off to work. College students reported receiving it from their parents, and liking it. Another reader had given it to an 80-year-old aunt. Apparently this is a book for all ages.

Monday, March 08, 2004

I walked out onto our front porch at 11 p.m. to collect all the cats for the night and was reminded that we live just three blocks uphill from a huge body of salt water: Low tide.

According to the local tide charts it is indeed a relatively low tide (two feet), though not as low as the tides the past few nights. Looking through the charts (graphic versions) I see patterns I'd had no idea existed (other than the pattern of two low tides per day that I'd grown up knowing about at Cape Cod).

The strong smell apparently is a result of the combination of a low tide with onshore winds--or lack of the usual offshore wind. Now I'll have to go look for wind charts...

Saturday, March 06, 2004

1. WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR KITCHEN PLATES? Blue
2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald
3. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? No idea. I use an optical mouse.
4. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BOARD GAME? Scrabble
5. FAVORITE MAGAZINE? The New Yorker6. FAVORITE SMELL? Tea; also like the smell on the fur of a cat that just came in from the snow.
7. LEAST FAVORITE SMELL? Gardenias
8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? My feet are cold.
9. FAVORITE COLOR? Black
10. LEAST FAVORITE COLOR? Tangerine
11. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? Varies
12. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME: n/a
13. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN LIFE? Happiness
14. FAVORITE SOUND? Waves on the shore
15. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA? Chocolate
16. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST? No
17. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? No
18. STORMS: COOL OR SCARY? Cool
19. WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? I plead the fifth. Too embarrassing.
20. IF YOU COULD MEET ONE PERSON DEAD OR ALIVE WHO WOULD IT BE? Mark Morris
21. FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK? Kir with syrup by Hediard
22. WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? YOUR BIRTHDAY? Sagitarius
23. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI? Yes. Peeled and steamed
24. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB WHAT WOULD IT BE? Mystery writer
25. YOU COULD HAVE ANY HAIR COLOR WHAT WOULD IT BE? The color I have, plus dramatic silver streaks.
26. YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE? Yes
27. IS THE GLASS HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY? Half full
28. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE? I Vitelloni (Fellini)
29. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? Yes
30. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? Two plush cat beds
31. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? 8
32. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? Baseball
33. BIGGEST FEAR? Suffocating
34. THERE IS NO QUESTION 34 - PLEASE PROVIDE A RANDOM ANSWER Fried clams and a chocolate frappe
35. PERSON YOU SENT THIS TO WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? My husband
36. PERSON YOU SENT THIS TO WHO IS LEAST LIKELY TO ? n/a
37. FAVORITE CD? Blue by Joni Mitchell
38. FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Hmmmmm. Futurama and Firefly
39. KETCHUP OR MUSTARD? Mustard
40. BURGERS OR HOT DOGS? Burgers
41. FAVORITE SOFT DRINK? RC
42. THE BEST PLACE YOU HAVE EVER BEEN? Sidmouth International Folk Festival
43. SCREENSAVER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW? My own .Mac screensaver
44. BURGER KING OR McDONALDS? Burger King